The Mayor's press team uses WhatsApp messages that disappear, avoiding scrutiny
Mayor Karen Bass' media relations office is communicating through WhatsApp messages that automatically delete every 24 hours, potentially protecting the messages from public records requests, according to three sources familiar with the office.
The press office is under scrutiny for its use of an unpaid consultant as a spokesperson for the first half of the year. Weeks after the consultant, Yusef Robb, quit working as a city spokesman and took on the Lineage outreach job, his Boyle Heights cold storage facility caught fire last month, spreading smoke and a foul smell. Robb continued to work for Bass as an unofficial consultant until The Times and other outlets reported on his dual roles.
Even though he was no longer a spokesman, Robb remained on multiple WhatsApp groups with the mayor's media staff, all intent on shutting them down, until at least a week after he started working for Lineage, said two sources, who asked not to be named for fear of repercussions. LA Material first reported Robb's presence at the stations.
The Times has filed a public records request for all messages Robb received or sent to the mayor or his press office between June 1 and July 10, including WhatsApp messages. The city's administrative code requires that records be kept for at least two years.
Bass executives declined to comment on the press office's use of disappearing messages on WhatsApp.
Bass has also communicated through disappearing messages.
In response to a public records request from The Times for Bass documents after the January 2025 Palisades fire, his office initially refused to pass on any messages. City attorney David Michaelson told the Times that “documents are ephemeral electronic forms” that are not subject to the city's record-keeping requirement.
He also said that Bass' phone was “programmed not to save messages.”
The city ended up finding more than 100 messages to and from Bass during that time and released them to The Times.
The Times is still suing the city, alleging that it illegally withheld and deleted the mayor's messages and other public records from the wildfire.
“Their argument is that they shouldn't keep them, and that's our argument,” Kelly Aviles, The Times' outside attorney on the case, said in an interview Thursday.
In a statement filed with the court, attorneys representing the city argued that keeping job-related messages for up to two years is “absolutely unreasonable.”
“The Times' proposed rule requires a certain level of intrusion into City employees' premises, which is, at the very least, offensive if not inconsistent with California's constitutional rights,” wrote Reuben Camper Cahn, the city's attorney.
Previously, some city employees communicated with each other through Google Chat messages that were automatically deleted after a day.
In January 2025, the city stopped that practice and required Google Chats to be saved “in perpetuity.”
Message retention has also been a problem for the federal government, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio setting some of his Signal conversations to automatically delete themselves.
